Offshore oil and gas Piper Alpha

CHAPTER 13 Offshore Oil and Gas Piper Alpha and Mumbai High... 

The first safety cases prepared for the process industries were those developed for North Sea offshore oil and gas operations following the Piper Alpha disaster that occurred in the year 1988. The Cullen report (Cullen, 1990) that was written following that accident was highly critical of offshore operating practices and recommended that a safety case approach be implemented. The Seveso incident that occurred in Italy further prompted the increased use of safety cases. Since that time the use of safety cases has spread to other industries (such as mining and railway operations) and to other nations, primarily in Europe and Australasia. (It is notable that the safety case regime approach has not been taken up for offshore oil and gas operations in the Gulf of Mexico—instead a more prescriptive approach based on industry consensus standards is used.)... 

Maitland, G. (2011) Offshore Oil and Gas in the UK An Independent Review of the Regulatory Regime. Report by Chairman Geoffrey Maitland, FREng, December 2011 (hereinafter, Maitland Review). Lord Cullen (1990) The Public Inquiry into the Piper Alpha Disaster. Report by the Chairman The Hon. Lord Cullen, Cm. 1310, 1990. HMSO London (hereinafter, Cullen Report). The events and responses surrounding the Piper Alpha disaster are beyond the scope of this work. For further discussion on this, see Chapter 6 in this volume. 

The development of fomal safety management systems for offshore oil and gas facilities can be said to have started with the Piper Alpha catastrophe that occurred in 1988. Offshore platforms had had safety programs before that time, of course, usually built around Safety Cases (described in Chapter 8). But Piper Alpha ushered in a new and much more thorough approach to system safety. 

Chemical Safety Board) had not been published, so further conclusions and insights are to come. However, there is no doubt that this event has had an impact on the offshore oil and gas industry equal to that of Piper Alpha. 

Over the years, many accidents in the offshore industrial sector have occurred and resulted in many fatalities and a large sum of money being spent on damages. Some examples of the deadliest accidents in the offshore oil and gas industry are the Piper Alpha platform accident in the United Kingdom in 1998, the Mumbai High North Platform accident in India in 2005, and the Alexander L. Kielland accident in Norway in 1980 [3],... 

There are major accident risks involved in the development and operation of offshore oil and gas fields. The Bravo blow-out in 1977, the capsizing of the Alexander L.Kielland in 1980 and the fire and explosion that destroyed Piper Alpha in 1988 remind us about this fact. A blow-out may result in extensive losses of human lives and damage to the environment. The Piper Alpha catastrophe demonstrates that fires and explosions may cause a high number of fatalities and extensive monetary losses. 

The Deepwater Horizon (DWH) event occurred in April 2010 in the GoM. At the time of writing some of the investigation reports (such as that from the Chemical Safety Board) had not been published, so it is Important not to draw too many conclusions until those reports and their associated findings are made available. However, it is already clear that this event will have an impact on the offshore oil and gas industry as large as that of Piper Alpha. 

The Piper Alpha platfomi was a large, fixed structure platform located about 110 miles northeast of Aberdeen in 474 feet of water. It handled both oil and gas. Equipment on board separated the incoming oil and gas streams and created (hydrocarbon) condensate product. The oil and condensate were then exported from Piper Alpha through a 30-inch line to the onshore Flotta terminal. Piper Alpha contributed about 10 percent of the oil production from the U.K. sector of the North Sea. The explosion and fire that occurred in 1988 is one of the most important process-safety events that has ever occurred either onshore or offshore. 

The Piper Alpha incident is described in Chapter 2. Piper Alpha, like most offshore production platforms, has a very limited on-board inventory of oil and gas. However the platform was also a hub—other platforms were pumping to it. Had they stopped pumping as soon as the first explosion had occurred, the loss of life would have been considerably less than the final toll, and it is likely that the platform would have been saved. 

The Piper Alpha offshore oil production platform was located about 120 miles northeast of Aberdeen, United Kingdom and operated by Occidental Petroleum (Caledonia) Ltd. The platform became operational in 1976, and it was initially constructed for producing crude oil, but later it also started producing gas with the installation of a gas conversion equipment. At the time of the occurrence of the accident, this platform produced about 10% of North Sea oil and gas [2-4]. 

Needless to say, safety and reliability in the oil and gas industry has become an important issue due to various types of accidents and problems over the years. For example, in 1988, Piper Alpha offshore disaster in the United Kingdom resulted in 167 deaths and total insured loss of about 3.4 billion. 

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